Bamboleim (Goa), March 22: Abhishek Yadav and Suthirtha Mukherjee are the two contenders from India who will vie with six other male and five female players for the lone qualification slot in each of their respective sections at the Road to Nanjing (RTN) 2014 series that gets underway at the newly-built Mukherjee Stadium here from tomorrow. The Road to Nanjing series is a qualification event for the Youth Olympics to be held at the Chinese city later this year which also held last year the Asian Youth Games. With entries restricted to one player per NOC in each section, every participating country is just allowed a male and female player which explains the thin attendance at the Goa event.

A dozen players have already qualified--four from 2013 YOG World Qualification event at Portugal, four from European qualification championships at Czech Republic, three paddlers have made the grade as per ITTF U-18 world ranking event in February 2014 and one from RTN series Europe held in France. In other words, there are 20 more slots to be grabbed before the YOG in August 2014.

Yadav, the bronze medal winner at the Asian Youth Games at Nanjing last year, has been seeded No. 3, based on his ranking points (1220). In fact, Hong Kong's Siu Hang Lam (1569) and Kirill Gerassimenko of Kazakhstan (1336) are ahead of the Indian in that order when the draw was taken here this evening. On the other hand, Suthirtha Mukherjee, who lost in the quarterfinals at the Asian Youth Games Nanjig, is the top seed for the RTN here.

With a clear-cut signal of only one player qualifying for the Youth Olympics from this championships, both Yadav and Suthirtha will have to put up their best ever performance to make the cut. However, looking at the possibility, one can see that Suthirtha Mukherjee stands a better chance than Yadav despite the likes of Herng Hwee Yee (Singapore), who is the second seed at 1565 points, Yulia Ryabova (Kaz) and Malaysian An Qi Angeline Tang, besides two unranked players from Korea and Iran. Though Suthirtha starts as a favourite, there is always a possibility of some upset being caused from an unknown player.

Coaches Sandeep Gupta and Arul Selvi exuded confidence of their wards making the cut. "Both Abhishek and Suthirtha have been in great nick and hopefully they should qualify," said Selvi.

As per the format, all players from the two groups will have to go through the first stage, which will be of best-of-of five-games, while the second stage will see best-of-seven games being played, including the positional matches. The finals are slated for Monday.

Following the RTN, the Indian Cadet and Junior Open will begin from Tuesday with the finals on Friday. Alen Ivancin from Croatia will be the competition manager for the championships while Ganeshan Neelakanta Iyer will be the chief referee. Lee Soo Joo (Korea) and C.L. Thade (India) will be his deputies.